Monthly status report: I'm not dead yet

Once again I am motivated to post by the thought that Pharyngula will unfriend me if I stay silent for an entire month.  He just got back from a trip to the Galápagos Islands.  He whines that he had to stand in line for two hours to get permission to leave Ecuador.  Well, um, it took me over 20,000 times as long as that to get permission to leave the USA—and I'm a citizen!

Earlier this month I drove to Massachusetts to attend my brother-in-law's wedding.  It was not a fun trip.  I lived in Mass. for 26 years and left with many unpleasant memories (but not all bad: I did meet Wifey there).  The state's mood is terrible these days.  How does the most left-wing state in the Union deal with being the evil aggressor in a pointless war?  They try not to think about it.  Just "support the troops" (because it's not their fault that the CinC is a thrall of Satan) and rename bridges and squares after the newly-fallen.  I suppose I'll do a trip report at some point, after kid#1 finishes expurgating her diary so I can remember what happened. Near the end of the trip, I saw a baby frog sitting on the siding of the hotel.  It was a very placid frog, just sitting there while I repeatedly tried to get my El Cheapo digital camera to take a decent photo of it.  For this second shot, the camera is maybe three inches away from the frog, who is looking directly at the lens!  The second picture might be "actual size" on your computer screen. While in the States, I redeemed my children's US Savings bonds, because the thought of owning anything denominated in greenbacks makes me sick (I don't claim to have any rational basis for this).  Because there were so many bonds, I had to go to two different banks on two different days to redeem them.  Bizarre US banking regulations required me to receive the proceeds as cash, not cheques; I presume that a report was made to FinCEN about my unpatriotic behaviour.  Thankfully the amount of currency involved was not enough to require a report to FINTRAC upon my return to Canada—one of the US banks gave me receipts, but the other insisted on completely untraceable cash!  I'm not really a money-launderer, I'm just drawn that way...  Anyway the money is now invested in Canadian government bonds under the children's names. On the way home, we had planned to stop by the Yankee Candle factory in South Deerfield MA.  The Mass Pike was backed up for miles, so I didn't feel like paying to use it.  I took the back roads, which led me through Ware MA.  Of course I thought of shun_ri, who recently unfriended me.  Again.  And it's probably permanent this time.  Shun Ri was the first LJer to spontaneously friend me.  I didn't know then how rare that would turn out to be.  I expect rabbitswift will be the next to go.

My dog "Walnut" is clearly having a better time in Canada than he did in the States, because he's getting more walkies now!

Back in June, I started to hear strange noises while sitting in my basement.  One day, a vole poked his head out from behind the washing machine.  He actually sat there staring at me for several seconds, before realizing that I am (A) a much bigger animal and (B) an enemy.  I live a block from a horse-feed factory (now in the process of shutting down) and there are farms only 1 km away from me in several directions, so this area has many voles (and feral cats to eat them).  I bought a mousetrap and baited it with peanut butter.  The next morning, I was the proud owner of a dead rodent.  Ain't modern technology grand?

Dead vole photo 1, Dead vole photo 2.